


Happy Hanukkah, Bucky Barnes

by Lasgalendil



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes-centric, Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers Feels, Catholic Steve Rogers, Gay Bucky Barnes, Hanukkah, Hurt/Comfort, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Podfic Welcome, Sassy Bucky Barnes, Slurs, Softstuckyweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 11:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8977099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasgalendil/pseuds/Lasgalendil
Summary: "I’m like a bad penny, huh,” Bucky asked when they finally broke apart. “I just keep turnin’ up.”“Least one of us gets our Hanukkah gelt,” Steve said, and leaned in to kiss him again.





	

  
“Shit,” Steve said, mouth around his sleeve, struggling with his cuff links.  
  
“’S a matter, Sweetheart?” Bucky wondered, barely glancing up from the iPad. He was watching animal rescue videos, Wildlife Aid or something. Good shit. Wilson’d recommended it. Something soothing and hopeful. And dammit if Bucky Barnes couldn't use that right about now. Right about the last seventy years, in fact.  
  
“Nothing,” Steve stammered.  
  
“Uh, huh. Nothin’, sure,” he grunted, sharing the link on his twitter feed. And tumblr. And his Instagram story. Just because he was a recuperating brainwashed invalid assassin in the wrong century didn’t mean he couldn’t do something about the shit situation of the world.  
  
Wilson reblogged him almost instantly.  
  
Bucky rolled over on the couch. “Isn’t it about time you took that patriotic Irish Catholic ass of yours to Mass, sweetheart?” Steven Grant Rogers, let it be known, had only missed Mass on Christmas twice in his life. Once for pneumonia, and the second time he’d been holed up in some forgotten French village with Monty, getting bombed out by Nazis while the Howlies worked out an extraction. Dumb punk had probably still held a service. He’d never gotten around to asking Monty about it, and it was too late now.  
  
“I’m, uh, I’m not going,” Steve flushed, still wrestling with that cuff link.  
  
“C’mere, Sweetheart,” Bucky rolled his eyes. Put down the iPad. Stalked over and fastened that gold pin over Steve’s wrist, then smoothed down his suit jacket sleeve. “There, Rogers. You look half-way respectable now. Those fancy rich folks down at the church just might let you in.”  
  
“I’m not going,” Steve said again.  
  
“Bullshit,” Bucky said. “You don’t miss Mass. Not on Christmas. And it _is_ Christmas, well. Christmas Eve. Get yourself to church, Sweetheart.”  
  
Steve shook his head. Frowned. Adorable little punk. He may be two hundred pounds of sheer muscle now, but Bucky knew that stubborn set of his jaw, those pouted lips. “I want to spend tonight with you.”  
  
Bucky snorted. He hadn’t seen the inside of a church, synagogue, temple, whatever, in hell, who knows how long now. “Well, I ain’t goin’ with you, Rogers, if that’s what you’re up to. You still prayin’ for me, Sweetheart?”  
  
“I don’t pray much anymore, Buck,” Steve told him.  
  
And oh, hell, Sweetheart.That stung. “What, you lose me an’ God all in the same day, huh?” And yeah. Yeah if there was a God, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish—if Bucky believed in him—he’d kick his ass right now. Because no one, _no one_ should have the power to make Steve Rogers look so deflated. Not after spending a good half his life praying to him. Just wasn’t fair. Wasn’t right.  
  
Steve swallowed. Couldn’t quite meet his eyes.  
  
Oh, hell.  Real or not real, Bucky was gonna find that celestial son of a bitch and kick his metaphorical ass. “Go on,” Bucky urged. “Get yourself to Mass. You’ll feel better. I swear, Sweetheart, I’ll still be here when you get back.”  
  
Steve tried to speak. Stopped. Started again. “It’s not that, it’s—it _is_ that, a little—alright it’s that _a lot_ —it’s just, well,” he sighed. “I didn’t know.”  
  
“Didn’t know what, shit for brains?” Bucky asked him, trying to elicit a smile. Then—“hey, hey, Stevie. Don’t worry about it. ’S not like I keep you around for your smarts, anyways.”  
  
Steve snorted. And that got him a bit of a grin, however lopsided and rueful. “Jerk,” Steve sniffed.  
  
“Punk,” and Bucky pulled him in. Just a quick one, tight squeeze and a pat on the back. He’d like to do more—a lot more, and with a lot less clothing—but Steve’d spent an hour with those goddamned cuff links and tie bar trying to doll himself up for church, and Bucky Barnes might be an atheist and he might be a sinner and he might be damned for all he knew but hell if he was going to be the reason Steve Rogers missed Mass tonight.  
  
He gave Steve’s ass a smack instead. “Get goin', Rogers. Sooner you get that sweet little ass of yours outta here, the sooner you get it back.”  
  
“Told you,” Steve insisted. “Not going.”  
  
“The hell you aren’t,” Bucky growled. “I might be fucked five ways to Sunday what with what HYDRA did to me, what I did for them— _don’t you argue with me Rogers they were my  fuckin' hands_ —but I ain’t gonna be the reason Captain America doesn’t sit his ass down in church or kneel or whatever it is you goyim do in there. Much less Steve Rogers. So just go, damnit.” Bucky gave him a bit of a shove. He hadn’t meant to get so choked up, but hell, Stevie. He’d given up so much, sacrificed so much in his short life. Bucky refused to be the reason he gave up God, too.  
  
“It’s—“ Steve tried, crestfallen. “It’s just, it’s—it’s Christmas Eve, Buck,” he said. “And—“  
  
“And your dumb ass should be in church.”  
  
“And it’s Hanukkah,” Steve finished, flushing. “I had plans for you—for us. But I didn’t realize, it’s, well it’s different every year, isn’t it?”  
  
“No, shit for brains, it’s 25 Kislev. Same as every year.”  
  
Steve rolled his eyes, some of that stubborn bleeding back through. “We’re family, Buck. We shouldn’t be alone. Not for this. I’d wanted us to both celebrate together, but—“ he shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t know.”  
  
“’S just Hanukkah,” Bucky shrugged. Honestly, he hadn't known. Didn't care. “Ain’t like I’m some kid or somethin’. Just a dumb tradition.” Like midnight Mass, he didn’t add. “An’ tradition don’t mean shit.”  
  
Steve frowned. “No. But it can be comforting.”  
  
“What, some broad gets herself knocked up, gives birth in a barn? Some kid’s tale about oil and lights?” Bucky snorted. “You wanna take comfort in that, go right ahead.”  
  
“It ain’t about that,” Steve frowned, getting all Irish and Brooklyn around the edges, all hot underneath his collar. And there he is. There’s his best guy, his fella. That dumb little punk too stupid, too stubborn to back away from a fight. Too pure-hearted not to pick ‘em, even if it got his dumb ass licked. “That’s—“ he searched for the words. “That’s superstition. Religious nonsense. What it’s about is _memory_ , Buck. People getting evicted out of their homes to a foreign land, struggling and making do as best they can for their kid. Keeping culture  and memory of it alive when it’d get you killed. People’ve been—“ Steve stops, takes in a big breath, fills those super-soldier lungs, that big, sculpted chest with so much air, it’s be enough to make the Bucky who’d known him, who’d cared for that bent and broken body so long ago swell with aching pride.  
  
“People’ve been trying to get rid of you. Of us. Erasing us. Taking our memories or twisting them. What HYDRA did to you, what the US government's done to both of us—but we’re still here. You and me, Buck. We’re still here. Despite all that. And _that’s_ what I want to celebrate.”  
  
And yeah, yeah they had, hadn’t they? British government not intervening during the potato famine, the unrest and racism that drove both their families from their home country, seeking a better life for their unborn sons. The persecution, the pogroms, the senseless death and violence that led his mother to flee west, west, as far west as she could go. The squalid tenements in New York City no better than the ghettos, no better than a manger. They’d been kikes and catlicks, two queer kids from Brooklyn, cussed at and cursed, they’d been 4F’ed and NINA’ed, unwanted and unfit but they’d survived—fuck they’ve survived through so much shit—and here they were. Here he was. Little Stevie Rogers. Wrong century, wrong body, but he’d know his fella anywhere.  
  
Bucky kissed him.  
  
“I’m like a bad penny, huh,” Bucky asked when they finally broke apart. “I just keep turnin’ up.”  
  
“Least one of us gets our Hanukkah gelt,” Steve said, and leaned in to kiss him again.  
  
“Go on,” Buck groaned. Left one last little lick against Steve’s lips. “Get outta here. Get your smart-ass to church.”  
  
“Told you. ’M not going.” Steve insisted.  
  
“Now that's a goddamn shame. Guess I’m gonna have to schlepp my frozen kike ass across half of Brooklyn, sit through the fuckin’ service all by myself.”  
  
And there, _there you are, Sweetheart_. Steve straightened, suddenly brightened like the serum’d been given anew. “You—you mean it?”  
  
Bucky socked him. “I ain’t turnin’ Christian on you, if that’s whatcha mean, punk.”  
  
Steve rolled tear-streaked eyes. “No. I mean—you’ll come with me? Will you really?”  
  
Bucky kissed him in reply. Bit a bit into the meat of his lip. “To be with you, Sweetheart? Yeah. Happy Hanukkah an’ all that shit.”  
  
“Merry Christmas, Buck.”  
  
“My holiday predates yours, punk," Bucky said, and reached for his coat. "By a coupla centuries. Yours is just some cheap commercial knock-off. An’ people say it’s the _Jews_ who’re money-grubbin’…”  
  
Steve laughed. Kissed him again. Soft and sure and slow. He didn’t believe in God, not anymore, and Bucky never had. But they’d go to hell for one another—they’d gone through hell for one another, so many times, in so many lives—so heaven didn’t matter. Not to them. Not anymore. No promise of Paradise, no fear of Purgatory. They’d done their share of suffering, they weren’t sorry, weren’t offering anything in Confession or Penance. They’d belonged to each other before they’d ever belonged to themselves, to their respective religions or lack thereof.  
  
_So silent night, holy night or some shit_ , Bucky thought, squeezing Steve’s hand while he sat or stood or knelt through that service. And it was peaceful, just the two of them, holding hands and brushing shoulders and not giving a damn about the stares or muttering. They were two old, scrappy bachelors, two confirmed queers, a relapsed Irish Catholic and an Atheist Jew sitting in church not because they believed or worshiped or _had too_ but because they were alive and they remembered, and they weren’t afraid to kiss, to be naked and unashamed, wouldn’t let themselves or anyone else be erased again. And if they went home and fucked afterwards, fell asleep still buried together in a too tight bed, found some small measure of heavenly peace that night, then it was the Peace that was Promised. If only to each other. If only to themselves.


End file.
